


The Bucket Plan

by Tierfal



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Making Up, Rain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:28:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24226615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: Ed demonstrates his singular talent for turning bad things into good ones on a night that Roy doesn't think is salvageable.
Relationships: Edward Elric/Roy Mustang
Comments: 17
Kudos: 521





	The Bucket Plan

**Author's Note:**

> HAPPY 5/20, MY LOVELIES ♥ (A bit early in my time zone, because AO3 is doing some [maintenance with emails](https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/16117) tomorrow! c: )
> 
> I started this in March, got absurdly blocked on it, and finished it up… recently? I'm not sure I remember writing the rest. XD
> 
> As usual, we're looking at a post-BH AU a couple years on down the line, where Ed keeps automail and presumably alchemy; and Roy keeps hustling his way up the ladder. I rated high because there's some Suggestive Naked™ near the end, but nothing super M-rated happens if that's not your jam. :)

Roy has to give Central City’s notoriously lousy weather credit for one thing: sometimes it mirrors his mood precisely.

He wants to blame all of this on the rain, but he knows that that’s too easy—he knows that that’s cheap. He knows that that’s the coward’s way out. He knows that rain makes him tetchy, and it makes Ed ache, but he also knows that neither of those factors is the cause of this.

They don’t fight like they used to. He’s grateful for that every day; he _is_. But they’re both still so _full_ , sometimes, with the echoes and the aftershocks of the feelings that have coursed through them and burrowed deep or broken out over the progress of the day. And sometimes Roy does stupid things like pick little fights over tiny, tiny, meaningless annoyances.

In the moment after, he always hates himself so much that the poison of it floods back through him twice as fast. He wants to be angry at Ed for letting him _get_ angry, and that makes him angry at himself for the sheer circular cruelty of it, and he knows that he can be better than this, but he’s just so goddamn _tired_ by this time of night—

They both managed to veer away from this one before it turned too nasty, but Roy’s still stinging, and Ed’s still sulking, and the whole thing feels tight and cold and rotten. Roy continues to stare at the word _discretion_ on a form that he should have finished by now, despite the fact that the past five minutes of staring at the word _discretion_ have not yielded any answers to the universe’s mysteries.

He never means to jeopardize their safe haven—to taint their sanctuary. He never means to lose control.

It’s just that the world weighs so _much_ , and it clings so close, and it crushes him and suffocates him simultaneously some nights; and when he can feel his armor start to crack, his brain whites out with terror at the thought that Ed might dig his fingernails in right at the seam. Ed might pry him open. Ed might find out—

Everything.

When Roy is rational, he remembers: Ed already _knows_. Ed has seen it. Ed’s still here.

But in the vise grip of the fear, as the breath strangles out of him—with his mind turning to a frigid monochrome, far too much like the oppressive empty endlessness of the Gate—

He forgets everything, in those instants. He forgets how much he cares; he forgets how far they’ve come. He forgets how much he utterly and absolutely adores the odd, interesting, too-passionate and too-compassionate man sprawled out on the armchair across the room from him, instead of on the couch beside him.

He hopes that Ed remembers.

He hopes even harder that Ed can find some way to forgive.

 _Discretion_.

Roy used to think that he had that one mastered, but here he sits, a scratched glass pillar of bottled-up regrets. He wants to fix this. He wants to fix all of it, but he doesn’t even know where to begin.

“All right,” Ed says. He tosses his book aside, stands up, and stretches both arms over his head. Then he sets his hands on his hips and his unrelenting eyes on Roy. “That’s enough. Fuck this shit.”

Roy’s heart beats—once, twice.

Is that—

Does he—

Ed can’t mean that the way it sounds—can’t mean the full extent of it; can’t mean that—

This can’t be—

 _Over_.

Not like this. Not over something stupid—something petty, something _small_ —

Roy knows better than that. Roy knows that it can.

Roy knows better than most how the pebbles build to boulders; Roy knows that the cumulative volume of the raindrops outside could drown a strong swimmer. Roy knows that most homes don’t get demolished—they disintegrate. They slowly, gradually fall apart, one broken beam or sagging wall or chipped dish that Hughes gave him dropped into the sink basin at a time.

It’s more than a ton of bricks: it’s an avalanche. He can’t breathe.

At his worst, at his _least_ , at his most infuriating and his most analytical; at his most distant and his most self-righteous, Ed is… everything. Ed is everything that Roy never dreamed of asking for. He’s the light in the darkness and the warmth in the blizzard and the spark of hope in the labyrinthine corridors of the despair. Even when a part of Roy wants to shout him down or prove him wrong or lock him outside and leave him there until he’s banging on the windows, Roy just… loves him. Past measure, past reason, long past choice. Roy loves him because it is a part of _being_ ; Roy loves him like Roy draws breath, instinctive and involuntary and essential. Roy loves him as a fact—as a fundamental truth that underlies existence. Roy loves him more than anything. Roy can’t _not_.

But if this is—

Roy’s guts drop out, and the hollowness frosts over so fast that his blood stills in his veins—glacial, gelatinous—

What if this is _it_?

What the hell is he supposed to do? Who is he supposed to _be_ faced with a wall of nothingness—with the gaping, yawning negative space hacked out and rimmed with shadows where Ed’s presence used to be?

He—can’t.

He can’t.

Ed belongs here—opposite him. Ed belongs on the other side of the table and the other side of the bed; Ed belongs next to him at the market, elbowing him out of sheer excitement if something catches his eye; Ed belongs in the foyer, yowling like an alley cat to indicate that he’s home. Ed belongs in the study; the books won’t sometimes stare in sheer reverence at themselves, after all. Ed belongs in front of the fireplace, with pale orange light flickering over the angles of his face; he belongs in the bathtub, sloshing water over the sides; he belongs in the kitchen, holding Roy’s wrist steady instead of taking the spoon to taste. He belongs in the bedroom, dozing off with a book held over his head so that it falls in his face and startles him awake; he belongs halfway up the stairs, out back in the yard, near the windows, on the doorstep; he belongs in the hallway, half-turning with a smile like the dawn.

Everywhere. All of it. Here. He belongs here—in Roy’s house, in Roy’s life, in Roy’s heart. He can’t leave. It’s all _his_. He’s made it his; he owns it all; he’s claimed it. Trying to extricate himself now would rip it all to shreds.

If this is it—

If this is _over_ —

Roy has already lost all of his last chances. They kissed this morning in the doorway; he didn’t savor it; he doesn’t know—

He has to remember what that _felt_ like; has to call up the details to pin it down. He has to find them—has to hold onto it. He has to keep that for himself; he has to have _something_ —

His heart pounds; his head spins; his mouth goes dry.

What the fuck is the point of getting up in the morning and dragging his body through another lousy day if he won’t have Edward Elric to come home to?

His breath sticks in the bottoms of his lungs and simmers there for two seconds too long.

He’s careless, sometimes. He’s stupid. He’s impulsive; he lets the needling anger push him further from himself.

But he would rend the sky and burn the world for the man standing in front of him. He’d level armies; he would do it all _again_. He’d do anything.

Ed has to understand that.

Ed _has_ to know.

So then—

So then it’s obviously not enough.

He isn’t worth it—no depths of devotion he can offer will balance out the scales.

He should have—

Something. Done something. He should have done _anything_ he had to; should have dug it up from in himself somehow and put forth everything that Ed ever could have wanted; should have been sufficient past a shadow of a doubt—

He can’t watch Ed walk out that door.

He can’t.

Ed is the axis of the universe.

Ed is all he’s got.

In this strangled moment of crystallized despair, he _really_ understands it for the first time—how much this is. How much it means. How much he’d give.

He will get down on his knees and beg, if that’s what it takes. He can’t lose this. He can’t let it go. Not like this. Not without the fight of his life.

He holds himself as steady as he can and looks into Ed’s eyes.

Except that Ed doesn’t say _Goodbye_.

Ed says, “Get up.”

Roy blinks at him.

Ed makes an unilluminating gesture. “C’mon.”

Very, very slowly, still hearing his heart in his ears and his own voice in his head screaming shrilly at him not to fuck this up, Roy sets his files aside on the couch and stands.

“Progress,” Ed says.

Roy bites his tongue on _Towards what?_. Ed’s thoughts are always several steps, if not several sentences, ahead of his mouth. He doesn’t try to withhold information; he never intends to lord it over anyone. That’s just how he operates. That’s just how he is.

“Okay,” Ed says. Another gesture, made marginally more helpful than its predecessor by the fact that it’s discernibly directed at Roy’s feet. “Take off your socks.”

Roy feels entitled to a long pause. He pages through several possibilities in his head and then flips back to the first one, which still seems the most reasonable.

He’s not sure that he should dare to hope, but he doesn’t have enough intellect left over after the wash of panic to conjure anything cleverer, so this will just have to do.

“I think,” Roy says, “that makeup sex usually starts with taking off _pants_ , but if you want to try—”

Ed cracks a grin that slings starlight into both his eyes. So much of the tension that Roy has held in his spine and his shoulders for the past two hours rushes out of him that he almost sways where he stands.

“Socks,” Ed says. This time he is definitively pointing. “Off. And then roll up your pants, since apparently you’re into that sort of thing.”

It was really very unfair of Ed to tell Roy to stand first, since trying to contort himself to remove his socks without losing his balance is every bit as undignified as falling onto the couch would be. Perhaps that’s the point. “Ankles? Am I into ankles? I suppose I might be. In general, I feel fairly positively about joints.”

Ed is trying not to laugh, and _God_ —God, that’s so good; it’s such a dizzyingly huge and sudden and tremendous flood of relief.

Ed is also… relocating the phonograph next to the window that looks out over the backyard.

“New campaign slogan,” Ed says. “Snappy. I like it.”

“Just ‘snappy’ is the new campaign slogan,” Roy says. “It’ll look brilliant on posters.”

If Ed has ever once in his life believed that Roy doesn’t love him more than life itself, it should be noted that Roy is very neatly folding up the bottom hems of his pants legs without yet having the slightest rationale.

He hopes that Ed has noticed, despite being somewhat preoccupied with making faces and selecting a record. Roy is extraordinarily confused, and attempting to be extraordinarily patient.

“I’m gonna veto that one,” Ed says. “And I bet Riza will, too.”

“The pair of you wouldn’t know PR genius if it came up and kissed you,” Roy says.

“It had better not,” Ed says. “That’d be harassment, and then the PR would need some PR, and we’d be in a hell of a mess. Are you ready?”

Roy… looks at him.

“I have no idea,” Roy says, because it’s the truth.

“Great,” Ed says, which figures. If nothing else—and there doesn’t seem to be too terribly much—he’s currently peeling off his own socks and rolling his pants up to match Roy’s, albeit with somewhat less finesse. Roy takes nonsensical instructions very seriously, after all. That’s precisely how he’s made it so far in government.

When the ankle display is sorted out, and Ed has one warm foot and one steel one bare, he fixes the fiery-eyed focus on the phonograph needle to set the record playing, and then he steps back. It’s one of Roy’s favorite jazz numbers—a bright one, brassy and loud and joyous and invigorating, very much like Ed himself.

Then Ed opens the window.

Then Ed gestures—much more clearly, and much less comprehensibly—towards the back door.

“Let’s go,” he says.

Roy stares at him.

Ed gestures again, one eyebrow arching. “What?”

Roy continues staring silently, so by most semantic measures, it probably doesn’t count as a pause, but it feels like one.

After a few moments, he manages, “Go where?”

Ed blinks, sighs, rolls his eyes, and then grins. All of those are familiar, but Roy loves the last one best.

“C’mon,” Ed says. “A little rain won’t kill you.”

“You say that with remarkable confidence,” Roy says, “for someone who has nearly seen the opposite come true.”

Ed wrinkles his nose, and then he extends his left hand. He wriggles his fingers.

The relief feels like a drug—the high suffuses Roy like soft lightning one moment; it shakes through him until he expects his teeth to rattle in the next.

Is he allowed to be relieved? Is this really happening? Ed forgives easily—too easily, too much—but this—

Roy knew in his guts that they were on the precipice. He know how damn close they were to falling. He can’t tell if he can trust this. Ed wouldn’t fake it just to make it worse, but it _is_ possible that Roy has transcended to such exquisite newfound feats of misery that he’s inventing all of it. This could be wishful thinking running wild. This could—

He takes Ed’s hand.

Ed drags him unceremoniously across the threshold and down the back steps and right out into the pouring rain.

The first tickle of cold water coursing down Roy’s skin almost registers as pleasant.

The second, third, fourth, and thousandth do no such thing.

They’re soaked to the bone in seconds, and the water’s _cold_. Roy’s feet sink into the mud that the rain has churned up in the grass; he curls his toes instinctively, and he can’t hear the squelch over the pattering of the raindrops, but he can _feel_ it, and that’s almost worse.

“So,” he says, looking down at Ed’s fingers curled tight around his—that’s what matters. That’s all that matters. “Nice weather we’ve been having lately.”

“Shut it,” Ed says. The water plasters his bangs to his face; he tosses his head to swing them aside, and they immediately draggle directly into his eyes again. “Hang on.”

He releases Roy’s hand and goes tearing off back into the house—which sounds eminently sensible; and which also gives Roy visions of muddy footprints on the rug, one half of them organic and one half mechanically precise. Momentarily, over the rain, Roy can just hear the strains of the song on the record. Then there’s a scratch. Then he hears the song again, rather louder, from the very start.

Ed bounds back out and down the stairs and over towards him, pausing several steps away. Ed’s dark shirt clings to his shoulders, his chest, his arms, his waist; rain streams off of his chin and the tip of his nose and his hair and his elbows and his hands.

The lattermost he holds out to Roy—both of them this time.

“Dance with me,” he says.

Roy tries to parse some nuance in Ed’s expression through the sheet of water. It is so fucking cold. Roy’s underwear is soggy, and he has only very rarely experienced a more wretched revelation, which is really saying something considering the life that he’s lived. His spine is wet; his scalp is a marsh; his clothes are heavy with it.

He steps forward and takes both of Ed’s hands.

“I thought you hated dancing,” Roy says.

“I do,” Ed says. “When it’s in front of other people.” He angles his head towards one side of the fence, and then the other— “Don’t figure the neighbors are gonna notice right about now.”

“You have a unique talent,” Roy says, “for sometimes simultaneously making perfect sense and no sense at all.”

“Yeah, well,” Ed says, grinning at him. He extracts his left hand from Roy’s to shove his hair back. It slips directly into his face again. “Somebody’s gotta meet you where you stand, since you’re constantly taking twenty words to say absolutely nothing.”

“I wish that wasn’t quite so fair,” Roy says.

Ed grins wider.

Then he fits his hand right back into Roy’s.

“C’mon,” he says. “This is your chance. Last time I refused to dance, you got all whiny.”

“I was slightly drunk,” Roy says.

“You were _really_ drunk,” Ed says.

“Unverified speculation,” Roy says. “I just wanted an excuse to put my hands on you in public.”

“So practice right now,” Ed says. He jerks his head back towards the window; water sprays. “Do you need me to turn it up a little more, or—?”

“No,” Roy says, and he bites his tongue on _This is perfect_ , because far too much would flood out after.

“Okay,” Ed says. His eyelashes dip; the grin curves up and angles itself into more of a smirk than a smile now. “Sweep me off my feet, _General_.”

Roy still feels like he has something to prove.

Then again, Roy feels that way every damn day of his life.

He was never meant to make it this far. He was never meant to have so much. He shouldn’t be _alive_ , let alone moderately successful—let alone surrounded by human beings of a far higher quality than himself who work actively to support him. He shouldn’t have any power. He shouldn’t have any luck. He shouldn’t be loved. He shouldn’t be _here_.

But he is, in spite of the long, long trail of mistakes fanned out behind him. He is, and Ed hasn’t made any overtures towards leaving, and the unfortunate reality is that people very rarely get what they deserve.

Roy is no longer too proud to gather up his ill-gotten gains and run with them as far as he can go.

To say that Ed has always been a quick study understates the concepts of quickness and studying, but it’s equally apt to say that he struggles with instructions, so Roy tries to split the difference. It’s not as if they’re dancing for prizes tonight; it’s not as if some unseen judges are awarding points. Ed exemplifies a remarkably aggressive sort of clumsiness when he’s paying too much attention or trying too hard, but when he lets himself _be_ , the breathtaking grace of his fighting physicality always comes through.

Roy thinks that it’s high time that they both took a moment just to _be_ tonight.

He wonders, too—if they both did that a bit more often, might there not be so many nights that start out like this one?

So he lets the music sweep through him, lets the rain plaster his shirt to his shoulder-blades and his hair to his face; lets the mud coat his toes; lets his heart out of its cage and sends it straight out through his fingertips.

He twines them in Ed’s and spins Ed once, and then again; the splash from Ed’s metal foot in the sodden grass makes his heart skip—like the first time Ed surprised him; like every time since.

He tries to let the music seep in—to let the soft percussion of the rain ease it under his skin, into his bloodstream; tries to let the cold rain sliding down his neck and sluicing down his spine wash out the tension, scrub away the preconceptions and the bitterness. He knows that he tends to cling to them; his always heart fears that they’re all that he has left.

Ed arches an eyebrow and squeezes his hand.

So Roy leads, and Ed watches his feet and tries to follow just a quarter- or a half-step behind, learning in the thick of it like he always does. Roy is grateful that he can’t hear the mud squelch under their toes tonight, even if he can feel it; he’s grateful for the chill—for every shiver that pushes him closer to Ed’s body, for the way they start to spin closer and closer together as the minutes slip away.

Roy guides them through a scattering of the old steps that he remembers from the days when he kept track, when it mattered, when the low lights and the strong drinks kept him convinced that life was worth living for just long enough. When things were different, and faint, and meaningful only ever in wisps and whispers. When things—except for the music; except for the motion—were so much worse.

This is better. This has been better since the beginning—Ed is; Ed has been. Ed is the difference. Ed is the _point_.

Ed is the center of a universe that Roy wants to be a part of. For the first time in a long, long time, he has a home.

The rain drips into his eyes, runs down his cheeks, slides from the bridge of his nose and down to disappear into the soaked-dark fabric of Ed’s shirt below him. The patterns—backstep, sidestep, double-quick, forward, back—start to fail, drifting out of relevance. All that’s left is turning, slowly, like the seasons, like the planet, like a weighted watch on a silver chain. All that’s left is the slicked blades of grass bending and arching under the soles of his feet; and the rain; and the night; and Ed.

Roy doesn’t know how long it’s been by the time they end up circling, idly, with their arms around each other—just swaying, with the music low and the yard around them distant, misty and obscure in every direction. With everything else on the far side of a pale sheet of rain.

Ed takes one step closer in towards him, and Roy’s arms act before his brain does: they know where they want to be. Roy catches the slightest glimpse of a smile as Ed folds in against his chest, and then he leans his head on top of Ed’s. The downpour continues. There isn’t a square inch of Roy’s skin that isn’t soaked and chafing against his sodden clothes, but he wouldn’t change a thing.

With all the rest of it stripped away, he can see into the heart of things a whole lot clearer.

It’s partly just old habits, isn’t it? They’re both so acclimated to shouting in the hopes of being heard—so used to having to fight for every instant of another person’s attention; to having to defend their ideas and ideals to the last breath before their voice gives out. Ed used to scream to the sky and tear through his own life like a hurricane, dressed like a hellion, making himself unmissable—so that if the darkness swallowed him before he meant it to, he’d have left his mark. So that every single one of them would remember. So that he wouldn’t disappear.

Roy used to find it sad, and sweet, and terrible, but he couldn’t bring himself—or perhaps he just refused—to face the fact that he’s the same. He’s quieter about it, yes; he doesn’t howl at the heavens fit to make the windows shake, but the same strain of terror runs through him. He is every bit as desperate to prove, somehow indelibly, that he was here—that he mattered. That he tried. That he lived and breathed and failed and won and loved. That he fought back against the tide of time with everything that he had in him. That he gave the history of their wretched species a reason to take down his name.

It’s so easy to forget that he doesn’t have to fight, here. He doesn’t have to shout. He doesn’t have to prove a thing.

“Hey,” Ed says.

Roy shifts back just far enough to look him in the eyes. One could almost mistake them for brown in the dark like this.

“You okay?” Ed asks.

“Yes,” Roy says. It’s even mostly true. “Just reflecting on how particularly useless I am just now.”

“That’s the point,” Ed says. He pushes up on his toes so that he can knock his forehead against Roy’s gently—still with the water streaming in between them. “’Cause I still love you like all fucking hell when you’re useless. And when you’re mad at me. And when you’re wrong. And when you’re not wrong, but I want you to be. It doesn’t matter. Okay? We just gotta remember that.”

“I know,” Roy says, meaning it, meaning it so fervently that he hopes that Ed will hear the way it confines the register of his voice.

“Let me make you a deal,” Ed says. His eyelashes rise, glimmering with the droplets, and he smiles, and arches an eyebrow, and takes Roy’s breath away just one more time. “If you try to keep your cool, I’ll try to keep mine.”

“Equivalent exchange?” Roy says.

“You bet your fine ass,” Ed says.

Roy smiles back, and attempts to push some sopping wet hair out of Ed’s face—which amounts to a spectacular failure, but a very adorable one.

“I’m in,” Roy says.

“Good,” Ed says. He stretches up again, bumps his head against Roy’s and then grazes his mouth over Roy’s lips on the way back down—a premonition of a kiss. And a _wet_ one. “For the record, I’m sorry.”

“No,” Roy says. The words burn on the way up; they ache on the way out— “I am. It was my fault.”

Ed scrunches up his nose. “What kind of a politician are you? You’re supposed to try to weasel your way out of taking blame at _least_ until I threaten to take you to court.”

Roy tries to laugh and leans his head on Ed’s again. “Then I apologize again for failing to apologize correctly. I…” Ed is unrelentingly honest with him every minute of every day. Surely Roy can summon the fortitude to bare himself just this once. “I mean it, though. I never… I _never_ want to take it out on you. All I think about as the day goes by is getting to come back to you, but they wear me thin and wring me out until I end up reduced to so much less than who I wanted to be, and I…”

“I know,” Ed says softly, eyes sliding shut. His fingertips trail up Roy’s back, a pointed opposition to the rain: solid, specific, deliberate.

“All my life,” Roy says, plucking the words out at the roots this time, thorns and all; “people have taught me—intentionally and otherwise—to hold back. To protect myself. At any cost.”

Ed’s eyelids rise, and his chin tilts, and he starts to quirk a smile.

“It’s—” Roy struggles, less with the words themselves than with the wall of black smoke behind them—the shapes within it; the shadows beneath. The things he can’t say because he’s never said them. The silhouettes he can’t describe because he’s never tried. “—different. You are. I _know_ that. I’ve felt it and seen it more than enough times to know. But I…”

“Fall back on your instincts,” Ed says, looking up through his dripping lashes, smiling slow. “Like we all do, because it’s what we know, and that makes it seem safer most of the time. I get it. It’s okay. Just… try and remember. It’s _me_ , Roy. I used to get so mad at Al sometimes that I wanted to try to steal his helmet and drop-kick it out the window. Never meant I loved him any less.”

Roy grimaces. “I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“Shut up,” Ed says, but with a spark of a sliver of a grin. “You know what I mean.” He hooks both hands around the back of Roy’s neck and knits his fingers together. The automail is always cold, but tonight his hands are harder to differentiate. “You wanna maybe finish this conversation inside?”

“That,” Roy says, “sounds like a fine idea.”

“Been tellin’ you since I was a kid,” Ed says, and the fingertips of his left hand dapple down Roy’s arm to seize his hand and start hauling, “that all of my ideas are.”

“Ah,” Roy says, attempting to watch his footing as Ed drags him towards the door. “What a lovely little trip down memory lane. Why, I have such nostalgic recollections of some of my responses—gems like ‘I didn’t realize that it was _possible_ to fell a marble column on a historical building with one’s fist, purportedly on accident’.”

“It _was_ an accident,” Ed says. “And a misunderstanding. And the photos were doctored, too.”

“Of course,” Roy says. “I remember there being a footnote to that effect on your report.”

Ed tows him up the back steps, shoves the door open, and then turns in the doorway, holding both arms out to keep Roy outside—allowing him to shelter under the eaves, at least, but leaving him perilously close to the continued deluge.

“Stay here a sec,” Ed says. “I’m gonna get a bucket for our clothes.”

Roy is about to ask him for his mathematical evaluation of the difference between one person tracking water all over the house looking for a bucket versus two when Ed immediately starts shedding wet articles right there in the doorway.

It is very difficult to think about mathematics after that.

“Don’t you dare,” Ed says—without even turning to look—the instant that Roy tries to sneak a foot across the threshold.

“You don’t play fair, and you know it,” Roy says. He feels strongly that he should be commended for maintaining such a standard of coherence when Ed, utterly naked and indescribably delectable, is sauntering off down the hall, just barely out of reach. “What if I get down on my hands and knees afterwards and mop the water off the floor?”

“If either of us was up to the task of doin’ a damn thing ‘afterwards’,” Ed says, “then what would happen is that your knees would hurt.”

Roy can’t help grimacing. “I hate it when you’re right.”

“I know,” Ed says contentedly. He opens the hall closet and puts his head in. His wet hair slithers over all of the incomparable muscles in his back. The side view of his thigh could fell a lesser man all on its own. The automail gleams even brighter in the lamplight with the aid of the droplets of rain, and a lazier jazz number pours from the gramophone, and Roy may very well have died and pulled a fast one on the forces in charge. “In a weird way, I think I should credit you for some of the cool stuff that I’ve figured out over the years, because realizing how much it annoys you when I’m right has motivated me to try to be right a lot more often.”

“You’re welcome,” Roy says. “Why don’t you come back here and show me how much you appreci—”

Ed closes the closet door, swings smoothly around the curve at the bottom of the stairs, and starts right up, humming loudly.

Roy can’t even muster proper disappointment—which is a shame, because his disappointed faces are all masterpieces in their own right—because he’s just so fucking _relieved_. Ed toying with him is, of course, the Elric version of a reward wrapped up in another unnecessary apology.

While Roy tries to listen for the distant sounds of doors or drawers or possibly fragile objects being banged around upstairs, he leans against the doorway and watches the rain. It’s a marvel that the whole yard isn’t a swamp just yet. At this rate, they may have a lakeside house come the morning.

Ed comes tromping back down the stairs ceremoniously enough for Roy to hear him easily even over the rain—and he does it wearing one of Roy’s bathrobes, and carrying the other in his arms.

“Fuck pants,” he says.

“That,” Roy says, “is a campaign platform that I wholeheartedly support.”

Ed snickers. “You were supposed to say ‘That’s an idea I can get behind’.”

“I thought that went without saying,” Roy says.

“Well, I thought we had a bucket,” Ed says. “So everybody’s wrong.”

“We do have a bucket,” Roy says. Some last wisp of a ghost that’s calling itself _dignity_ won’t let him reach both arms out and make grabbing motions for the robe. “Try the basement.”

“ _You_ try the basement,” Ed says, standing just out of reach anyway. He knows exactly what Roy’s thinking, the little shit. He usually does, and it’s usually beautiful.

“Perhaps we should scratch the bucket plan,” Roy says. As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he knows that that’s how they’ll both remember this night—dancing in the rain, and the Bucket Plan. “Why don’t we just dump them into the bathtub?”

Ed’s straight face starts cracking with a grin before he’s even made it through a syllable. “Why don’t we just dump _you_ into the bathtub?”

Roy leans against the doorframe, folds his arms across his chest, and tosses his head to sling his wet hair out of his face. Hopefully he gets an artful little spray of droplets arcing out behind him, too. “Done if you’ll join me.”

Ed tries to scowl and spectacularly fails. “You… It’s a worknight.”

Roy can’t help himself: “Rain check?”

Ed throws the bathrobe at his face—which he expected, of course, so he catches it.

Roy makes a concerted effort to use stripping out of his wet clothes as an opportunity to torment Ed as much as Ed has tormented him, but collecting the pile of dripping fabric and transporting it upstairs for a tub deposit proves substantially less sexy than he’d hoped. One can’t win them all, he supposes. When it’s games like this one, though, trying is its own reward.

They end up wrapped around each other on the couch in the bathrobes. Roy stokes the fire high the easy way; they leave the record on low; Ed’s wet hair keeps sticking to both of their skin. Roy silently celebrates how adorable it is that his two bathrobes are identical, but the bottom hem that reaches just past his own knees extends to the middle of Ed’s shins.

“Damn it,” Ed says after several minutes of indescribable bliss. “This would be the perfect time for a nap, but then I wouldn’t be able to sleep when we go to bed for real.”

“You should never be bound by rules,” Roy says, although he hears the low rumble of his own voice betraying the way that the sleepiness has started washing over him, too.

Ed laughs, breath hot on his collarbones, and he never wants to move again. “Can I have that in writing? I gotta go back in time and give it to my previous self.”

“No can do,” Roy says. “Blanket allowances are only available off the record. Besides, your previous self hadn’t earned it yet.”

“All right,” Ed mumbles. “That’s fair. He was a shitheel.”

“Sometimes,” Roy says. “But just as often, he was extraordinarily kind; and just as often again, he was brilliant.”

“Yeah,” Ed says. “And he was a kid. Even if he was trying not to be. Maybe especially then.” He nudges his nose under Roy’s chin. “So what’s your excuse?”

“For being a shitheel?” Roy asks.

Ed snickers again. “That sounds so good in your voice. Elegant-vulgar. _Love_ that shit.”

“Thank you,” Roy says. “I practice.” He sighs. “I was born that way. Congenital defect. I’m going to be a shitheel forever.” He runs a hand up Ed’s back and then back down. “Do you think you can live with that?”

“Obviously,” Ed says—like it’s just that easy. Like it always has been; like it always could be. “Especially if you keep saying ‘shitheel’.” Roy rubs more intently at his shoulder-blade. “And if you keep doin’ _that_.”

“Those are two things that I can promise,” Roy says.

“Good,” Ed says. He kisses Roy’s throat, rolls off of the couch, misses his footing, crumples to the carpet, says “ _Ow_ ,” uses the coffee table as leverage to pull himself upright, and smoothes the lapels of his stolen bathrobe. “Glad that’s settled,” he says. He holds his hands out to Roy. “C’mon. You gotta get some sleep so you can get up and do lots more stupid shit tomorrow.”

“Unfortunately,” Roy says, taking both Ed’s hands, “you’re right.”

“I usually am,” Ed says, hauling him up.

“Distressingly frequently, at least,” Roy says.

Ed grins at him, firelight bright and rain-bedraggled and completely irresistible. “Can I have _that_ in writing?”

Roy kisses the tip of his nose and iterates a few words directly from his heart:

“Not a fucking chance, my love.”

Ed’s laughter carries them halfway up the stairs, which is all he wanted anyway.


End file.
